Sri Lanka navy rescues two elephants washed out to sea

Two young elephants washed out to sea were saved from drowning Sunday by the Sri Lankan navy in the second such incident off the island in as many weeks.

The navy said the pair of wild elephants were brought ashore after a “mammoth effort” involving navy divers, ropes and a flotilla of boats to tow them back to shallow waters.

Photos showed the elephants in distress, barely keeping their trunks above water in the deep seas about one kilometre off the coast of Sri Lanka.

“Having safely guided the two elephants to the shore, they were subsequently released to the Foul Point jungle (in Trincomalee district),” the navy said in a statement.

“They were extremely lucky to have been spotted by a patrol craft which called in several other boats to help with the rescue.”

Two weeks ago, the navy mounted a similar operation in the same region to save a lone elephant washed eight kilometres (five miles) off the Sri Lankan coast into the deep waters of the Indian Ocean.

Navy officials say the animals were likely swept out while crossing shallow lagoons in the region.
They are not the only wildlife to encounter trouble in the biodiverse island.

In May, the navy and local residents saved a pod of 20 pilot whales that became stranded in Trincomalee, a natural harbour that is popular for whale watching.

The waters around Trincomalee, which were used by Allied forces as a staging post during World War II, have a high concentration of blue and sperm whales, while the surrounding jungles have herds of wild elephants.

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Sri Lankan baby elephant gets international attention

The elephant donated to South Korea by the Sri Lankan government in 2010 got quite a fright when her baby fell into a pool at the Grand Park Zoo in Seoul, South Korea.

The footage recorded by the zoo shows the curious one-year-old elephant – christened ‘Korilanka’ to mark the ties between Sri Lanka and Korea – getting close to the water’s edge and accidentally tumbling in.

Fortunately, the baby elephant was not actually drowning, says Joyce Poole, a National Geographic explorer and co-founder of Elephant Voices: “When elephants swim, they put their trunk out of the water and continue to breathe.”

In the video, the National Geographic reports, the baby can be seen doing this snorkeling behavior—meaning it was in no imminent danger.

Even though the family knows the baby can swim, they are still clearly alarmed it has fallen in without meaning to, as evidenced by their quickly flapping ears, says Poole.

Even the elephant in the background of the video, separated by a fence, starts rapidly pacing back and forth.

“Elephants are drama queens, especially the females. If anything kind of dramatic events happens in the family, it is cause for great excitement,” Poole explains. “It is part of the bonding process.”

The uniquely close family bonds and capacity for empathy of elephants is evident in this display. Only one of the female elephants that helps the baby is its parent, the mother. The other larger, older elephant that springs into action to help,a 36-year-old, is a bonded family member that gets just as worried about the infant as its own mother.

National Geographic points out that in the wild, the older female elephant would likely be a grandmother or aunt of the baby, but in captivity, unrelated elephants are housed together and still form close bonds.

In the video, the two bonded females are clearly close as they coordinate to help the baby out of the water and back to the safety of dry land, the National Geographic reports.

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